


Only Wrong Once (A few too many times)

by crystalrequiem



Category: Bastion
Genre: Confusion, Gen, Kid introspection, Oneshot, Spoilers, game restart, mute Kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5437598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalrequiem/pseuds/crystalrequiem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'll see you in the next one,"</p>
<p>They are words that echo in his skull and mean something, over and over, but he's not sure what.  He knows he's got somewhere to go, he knows there's things he's missing but he doesn't know what they are (yet). </p>
<p>He gets up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Wrong Once (A few too many times)

**Author's Note:**

> Just fun introspection on what happens if **SPOILERS*** You chose Rucks's path at the end of the game. Maybe more than once. 
> 
> Might continue with vignettes later as I continue my annual Bastion playthrough. haha.

"I'll see you in the next one…."

The words drift to him on strange waves of sound as he stirs, wakes up. For a moment he does not know where he is. He is not enveloped in warmth, huddled among bodies and pets as he should be. He is not out in the wilds, hunting for more cores to help them. He is not on assignment at the outskirts of the city. He does not know what his own thoughts mean.

He is awake, staring at the shattered remains of the world, at years of work on the rippling walls undone. He remembers the feeling of the earth crumbling to dust around him—everything falling to ruin. ( _He remembers Zia’s sad eyes as he hit that button. As he did the “right” thing. And he never felt so damn wrong)_

He stumbles about the room—what’s left of it—his head buzzing. Leaning against the walls, knocking into stray boxes, he half-falls his way forward, forward, forward. He only knows how to keep moving ( _Even though the darts are starting to pile up, driving deeper and deeper into his skin, filling him like a pincushion, some pumping him with poison. His vision blurs, red shadowing his field of view, but it’s always forward, forward. He can’t falter now. He can’t leave Zulf behind.)_

He comes to the middle of the bridge, sees his best friend—the Cael hammer seems fine, if nothing else. He picks it up and already feels better with the weight of it in his hands. ( _he would have been as happy with the machete or the pike. He’s at home with all of them, by now. A regular machine)_

There’s a pulsing, a strangeness from the crest on his back, and the ground seems to form in front of him, rushing up to meet his feet from the nothing that stretches endlessly around him. He doesn’t stop to question it. It feels right. _Is_ right—isn’t this just how things were? Had always been since….

His thoughts feel scrambled and wrong, as full of holes as the earth around him. He only knows two things for certain—only two thoughts he knows without a doubt must be true. First, he can’t afford to stop moving. There’s something important that he still needs to do, some debt that needs to be repaid. Second, that somewhere out there, there are people waiting for him. He doesn’t know who and he doesn’t know why ( _your Mother’s dead, they told him when he walked into the apartment of a stranger instead of a place that should have been home. He’d picked up his single bag, turned right around and gone back to the wall.)_ but he _knows_ like he’s never known anything before.

A few gasfellas and squirts are still sifting through the ruins of the walls alongside him, raging, hurting, as empty and out of their minds as he feels. He cuts through them like they’re nothing. Through the haze of violence and the sickening black-blue goop that flecks his hammer, he catches a glimpse out of the corner of his eye, the glinting of crystal in the sun. Numbly, he makes his way to it like a man possessed, reaches down and cradles the delicate comb in the cup of his hands.

_Nacie_ , he thinks, and gives himself a silent moment to mourn. Once upon a sometime, he’d had hopes for her survival. Once upon a sometime, there’d been sun and light and a sky instead of ash and void. He doesn’t believe in that sometime any more. A few more squirts find him, hurting, crying out for justice. He pockets the comb and gives them what they want. He doesn’t believe in sunshine any longer. But he does still _believe_ , so he keeps going. He keeps going.

Rondy’s place looms up from its spot beyond the fountain, and he _knows_ with a bone deep weariness what he’ll find. He’s so certain that he’s starting to grow suspicious. Scattering ashes, a shield and a fight.  A long drop from the window that’s not quite him pleading with the gods for death, ( _not just yet)._ How can he know so much? How can he be so sure? Is it all a dream?

Not a dream, he thinks as he reaches his hand out blindly, and finds the bow that broke his fall and bruised his ribs, as he knew it would. Not a dream, but something far, far worse. He knows where he’s going now, even if the why still slips from his grasp—The Bastion. It’s something else, floating through the wreckage of this world, a single ray of hope. The crest on his back hums with each step, urging him toward it. He doesn’t argue. There’s something important for him there, something waiting.

He cuts his way through the dead and the wailing gasfellas and the gunk until he finds the core, and he _knows_ this is what he needs. He takes it with bandaged hands that are only barely shaking, feels the earth begin to tremble and looks down. The way out stretches before him like a bad dream, so many turrets and enemies to fight through. The skyway’s too slow, he decides, and he jumps, core cradled close to his chest.

He finds something on the other end. Someone important.

_Rucks_ , he thinks, staring at the old man in his yellow, mason’s issue apron.

“Hunh, a Kid, eh? Lemeign sure has an awful sense of humor.”  
  
_Yes,_ He nods, and he knows. Lemeign’s either a terrible comedian or a wrathful son of a bitch, but he’d rather hope there’s _someone_ laughing at all this. Surely the old man’s right. The old man’s never been wrong, save once.

“If you’ve got the crest, you’re a Mason sure enough, and if you’re a Mason, this old girl’s gonna need all the help you can give.” Rucks pats the rough stone of the Bastion and Kid nods along. He tries not to think too hard about the way Rucks doesn’t comment on his silence. Seems like the old man should have said something there—

_Can you talk, son? Guess it ain’t no matter if you can’t. You got a hammer ‘n you can use it, and that’s about all you need to get this girl fixed up.  
_ Could have said something there—but didn’t. Hadn’t. Things were changed, but they weren’t changed enough. The world’s still gone and he doesn’t entirely remember what it was like in the way back, before the ground only formed beneath his feet a few steps at a time.

_Lemeign’s got an awful sense of humor_ , he thinks again, over and over and hopes the damned gods hear him. The old man’s only been wrong in one thing, and now he’s not sure how many times that one, wrong thing has happened. He’s going to get the Bastion running again, that’s for damn sure. But not for the reasons Rucks wants. Not this time.


End file.
